


Make Believe

by AstridContraMundum



Series: After-comers Cannot Guess The Beauty Been [10]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, With a song from S4, takes place after s7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: When Bixby loses his patience while stuck in London traffic, Morse tries to cheer him up with a private concert.It's not Handel.(based on a tumblr prompt... "Amuse Me.")
Relationships: Joss Bixby/Endeavour Morse
Series: After-comers Cannot Guess The Beauty Been [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1152587
Comments: 21
Kudos: 36





	Make Believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EAU1636](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAU1636/gifts).



Even back when _The Great Gatsby_ was only a worn paperback book tucked away in his back pocket, and not an inspiration and an instructional manual, Josiah Taylor had always dreamed that one day … one marvelous and magical day … he’d enjoy all of the finer things, all of the luxuries of life.

Not the least of which was a fleet of classy automobiles.

When he was sixteen, he had rescued an old roadster that had been stored, half-forgotten, in a neighbor’s ramshackle shed. He tinkered a bit with the engine, and once he’d shed the old car of all the rust, given it a new coating of glossy red paint, she was as good as new.

He could still remember, with a rush of joyous memory, the sense of freedom he had had, tearing around the dirt backroads of Lafayette County—with the windows down, with the wind in his hair, with the sweet gums and the water oaks and the honeysuckle and the blackberries all blurring by in a barrage of sunlit green—he could do anything, be anyone, he was king of the county.

Most of all, he remembered the boundless blue sky and the greater boundlessness of his dreaming. One day he’d hop a train and leave, go off somewhere, anywhere. And why not? Wasn’t like he had anything left at home…

One day, he’d go off to the city. Didn’t matter which one. New York. Paris. London.

When Josiah had imagined such things, however, he had always envisioned himself in an evening suit, standing on the grand stairway of a large country house, raising a glass of champagne in a toast as an elegant party swirled below.

Not sitting in city traffic on a sweltering summer’s day, making his way inch by infuriating, excruciating inch to the Heathrow Airport, absolutely trapped, going nowhere.

Bixby tightened his hands on the wheel, willing the idiot in front of him to stop playing around with the radio and pay attention to the goddamned road. In forty-seven minutes, their flight back to France would be streaming down the runway without them.

Not that he was counting.

He chanced a glance over at Endeavour, who was slouched in the passenger’s seat beside him. He was wearing the sunglasses Bix had given him on their second trip back to Oxford, the ones he had worn so that he could go about unrecognized, and—between the sunglasses and the utter blankness of his expression—Bix had not the slightest idea what he was thinking.

It was likely—more than likely—that he not paying any attention at all to what was happening around them, that he was either wool-gathering, or running an opera through his head, or mentally revising a poem, thoroughly preoccupied by some trick of meter or even by one errant syllable.

And with any luck, it would stay that way.

It was Bix’s fault, of course, that they were late. If Endeavour noticed how close they were to missing their flight, he’d be sure to give him hell for it.

_Christ. Why do you take so long to get ready?_

Easy for Endeavour to say, what with his Oxford education, however incomplete, his haughty and austere face, his bearing of a natural aristocrat.

Not to mention his complete and utter disregard for what others thought of him.

Bix had to take more care, didn’t he? It took time, tending to the details, putting on the mask, making sure it was on good and tight. After all, even that dullard Belborough had once been able to see right through the chinks of Joss Bixby, all the way, it had seemed, to that dogtrot house under a live oak, all the way to the middle of a beautiful but painful desolation, all the way to an overgrown and failed farm, to six white crosses in a small graveyard …

Up ahead, the traffic started to move, to inch slowly forward, but the blunderhead in front of him was now looking at a map—he was simply sitting there, allowing other cars to cut in in the process, leaving him, Bixby, stuck, going absolutely nowhere. 

Bix leaned sharply on the horn.

“A little late for that now, old man,” he called, bitterly, even though, above the hum of traffic, there was little chance the man with the unfolded map could hear him.

In the seat beside him, Endeavour jolted upright, appearing to snap out of his reverie. Bix had been right; Endeavour had not been paying the slightest attention at all.... he might even have been.... good God, was it possible?

He might even have been _asleep._ Bix might have driven them to Timbuktu for all that he cared.

Endeavour furrowed his brow, as if asking for some explanation for Bixby’s uncharacteristic fit of anger.

“Idiot doesn’t know where he’s going,” Bixby explained. “I don’t know why he doesn’t get the hell off the road to figure it out.”

Endeavour said nothing, his expression behind the sunglasses fading back to a blank—but now not with inattentiveness, but rather with perplexity.

And then… he glanced at his watch.

Bixby felt his shoulders tense. Here it came… the lecture Endeavour had given him time and time again.

“We’re going to miss our flight.”

“Yes,” Bixby said. “Noticed that myself, funnily enough.” 

“It’s alright,” Endeavour said, his manner oddly conciliatory. “Worse thing that will happen is we’ll just have to get new tickets. Right?”

Bixby snorted. That’s what _he_ always said. It was always Endeavour who was such a tightwad, quibbling about every penny. He had even made a sour face of disapproval when Bix had picked up the tab for poor old _Strange_ at the pub, just the night before, for god’s sake.

Bix kept looking straight ahead, careful to keep his expression neutral, but, still, he could feel Endeavour’s big eyes on him from behind the dark lenses, scrutinizing him as if he were sickening for something, as if he were a crossword puzzle with one missing clue.

Then, he leaned forward and snapped on the radio.

Inwardly, Bixby groaned.

He had grown to appreciate opera, even to love some of it, but he really only enjoyed it in either the setting of an elegant and gilded opera house, or while relaxing on the couch back at home, cradling a glass of Scotch, watching as Endeavour’s face filled with that soft sort of bliss that smoothed out all of his considerable furrows and the edges….. leaving him someone altogether different … not at all the Pagan he had first met…

But the dramatic cascades and clashes of opera were not at _all_ what he wanted to hear now, not while he was sitting in traffic, not when his nerves were already shot.

Bixby steeled himself, his hands tightening on the wheel, anticipating a razor’s edge of histrionic cries, but instead, Endeavour turned the dial past his favorite station, and kept going, listening to a snatch of one song and then another.... Until…. 

A faint strain of horns and a single voice rose up from the speakers ….

Bixby frowned, this time in confusion, as Endeavour swiveled in his seat so that he was facing him, and then—when the girl on the radio began to sing—Endeavour lowered his sunglasses so that he was looking out at him from over the tops of the dark lenses, his blue eyes bright with wry suggestiveness…

_“Like summer tempests came my tears, love.”_

“What … what are you doing?” Bixby asked.

Endeavour didn’t answer, only took a breath and sang another line…

_“When I learned you’d been untrue.”_

“What the... ?”

_“But after rain must come a rainbow.”_

_So until then here’s what I dooooooooo.”_

Endeavour drew out the final note with a flourish, really laying it on thick, as if he were singing an opera, rather than some old pop song that had been played on the radio half to death during the summer of ‘67, the summer they had first met.

Bixby would have laughed if he hadn’t been so thoroughly stunned.

“What are you….? ”

“Come on,” Endeavour said. “Sing. You’ll feel better.”

Bixby pursed his lips; Endeavour knew very well that he couldn’t carry a tune.

And he also knew that if Bix couldn’t do a thing well, with real style, then he’d rather not do it at all.

“Come on,” Endeavour coaxed. “It’s hardly Handel. Even _you_ can sing this.”

And then Bix _did_ quirk a smile, at the inadvertent backwards compliment.

The musical interlude after the first verse faded, and Endeavour burst out into the chorus, twisting in his seat to the beat, really throwing himself into it …

_“Make believe you loved me, darling....”_

_“Make believe you cared.”_

_“Make believe you need me, and I’ll make believe you’re there....”_

And then Bixby was smiling, not at the song, but with a half-forgotten memory. Suddenly, the day felt like a sweet and reverse echo of a long-ago night when they had driven home from a party in London, and Endeavour—who was still Pagan, then, and so smashed that he could barely stand—had turned on the radio and sung opera at the top of his lungs, half-way back to Lake Silence.

They had torn along the road with the top down, the air heavy with the cool scent of evergreen, as Pagan’s voice rolled out into the black and silver blanket of the night, devastatingly smooth and low, as clear as the stars, until it grew gradually more slurred…

By the time they had reached the forlorn little cabin at the edge of the dark lake, Pagan had fallen asleep, his head lolling heavily on Bix’s __shoulder.

“You’re home,” Bix had said, as Pagan began to stir, and then… because it had just seemed right … even though he knew it was some sort of sore point, even though he knew he ran the risk of driving him away …. he said it.

_“I’m not calling you Pagan anymore,” Bix said, his words as firm as granite. “I don’t know how you acquired that nickname, but it doesn’t suit you at all.”_

_“Oh,” Pagan said._

_Bixby, surprised at his sudden and surprising meekness, decided to push his luck._

_“Do you like it? Being called Pagan? You don’t really seem to.”_

_“No. Not particularly,” he admitted. He sighed, then, as if he had known the subject might come up, and looked away into the trees._

_“You could call me Morse, then, I suppose,” he said._

_“No,” Bixby said. “That’s ridiculous.”_

_“Why?”_

_Bixby huffed a laugh at that. “I think you can guess the answer to that.”_

_“Oh,” Pagan said again. “So, what do you want to call me, then?”_

_“Well, I suppose I’d like to call you by your name.”_

_For once, Pagan wasn’t looking at him. Now, he was looking up, keeping his eyes fixed on the branches and stars above._

_Bixby felt his heart seize: he’d been too flip, he’d annoyed him, this is when he’d get up and disappear into the house, close that flimsy wooden door on him._

_Instead, he murmured something, just under his breath. It sounded a bit like, “It’s ’n endeavour.”_

_Bixby felt his stomach twist. Was it always going to be thus? Game after game? Were they ever going to be able to speak clearly to one another?_

_“It’s an endeavour?” Bixby had asked. “What is that supposed to mean, old man? Is it a challenge? Something I’m just going to have to figure out? Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not like all of your clever friends—I’m just no good at these sorts of riddles. Can’t you simply tell me?”_

_Pagan turned, then, in the passenger’s seat, so that he was facing him once again, his eyes close and blue and luminous in the half-light._

_“No,” he said, in his low and mournful voice. “That’s my name. It’s Endeavour.”_

And now, Endeavour had dropped his voice to new slow and sultry depths for the next verse of the song, but when the chorus started up again, he really let it rip…

_“Make believe you loved me, darling....”_

_“Make believe you cared...”_

“Just try it,” Endeavour said, breaking off, mid-breath. “You’ll feel better. It’s like mind Scotch, this stuff.”

Bixby smiled wryly.

He meant _mind candy_ , one supposed.

_“Make believe you need me and I’ll make believe you’re there.”_

_“Make believe my heart’s not broken, make believe it’s true.....”_

Bixby had to turn away, look back to the road, to keep a straight face, to keep up any façade of dignity in the onslaught of the utter ridiculousness of it all. Besides, the traffic was beginning to slowly edge forward a bit. But Endeavour went on, undeterred. 

_“Make believe you love me one day and we’ll say I do.”_

_“So let the thunder drown my sorry....”_

_“While I wait for you to call...”_

_“So let the raindrops aid my teardrops.....”_

Endeavour was half-laughing through the next line, as if Bix were utterly transparent, as if he could see right through him…

He reached out and nudged his shoulder gently, with all the resoluteness of DC Morse, making it clear that he wasn’t giving up…

Bix turned back, despite himself, and there it was—the memory that was the mirror of the first, the memory of the first time he had seen that look on Endeavour’s face, on the morning he had returned home from Scotland…...

_Endeavour lay on the carpet, looking over at him, and there was a twist of something else there, a determination in the eyes and a stubborn set of his chin, and, suddenly, he was rolling Bixby onto his back and straddling him._

_Endeavour set his hands onto Bix’s upper arms and then slowly slid them down, so that he was holding his wrists, pinning his hands down over his head, down to the floor._

_Bixby had been utterly perplexed, but Endeavour was watching him with an oddly intent look on his face._

_He leaned forward, lowering his mouth to his, and Bixby thought that he was aiming for a kiss, but at the last moment, he turned his face, so that his curls caught at the stubble on Bix’s face. He set a warm mouth by his ear, and then whispered the words that Bixby had once called out to him, when he had seen him walking down the road, knowing such a line would annoy him no end._

_“What’s your name, baby?”_

Because, of course, Endeavour had known, perhaps from the very beginning, that it wasn’t Joss Bixby.

_“Make believe my heart’s not broken...”_

_“Make believe it’s true.”_

_“Make believe you’ll love me one day, and we’ll say I dooooo….”_

He infused the last line with an extra burst of gusto, drawing out the final note with an excess of melodrama, as if the words were utterly ludicrous.

Well might Endeavour scoff, but Bixby believed in the green light—things were changing all the time, and, tomorrow he’d reach out further, run faster, strive harder. And the world would strive right along with him. Sometime, by the end of the century—that Endeavour had always claimed would end in 2001, rather than 2000—he’d take him to Amsterdam, to that blasted Rijksmuseum, to stand before that painting.

The real one.

The authentic, true version of the counterfeit painting before which they had met.

He’d reach up behind Endeavour’s ear, and, with a wave of his hand, he’d pull out two gold bands, in the same way he had once beguiled him with a gold gambling chip, back in the summer of _’_ 67, when they had sat on the dock in Oxfordshire.< /p>

“You’re smiling,” Endeavour said, as if daring him to contradict it. “You know you want to sing.”

“I was just wondering if I might get an encore,” Bix replied, smoothly. “Or another private concert sometime.”

“Maybe,” he said. “If you’re lucky.”

And that was the understatement of the year.

“Of course, I am, old man. Of course, I am.”

Endeavour hadn’t had much success in getting him to sing, but he seemed to take Bix’s bemused smile as the next best thing, because when the grand finale geared up, he threw himself into it once more, as if determined to end the song on a bang.... 

_“Make believe it’s true....”_

_“Make believe you’ll love me one day, and we’ll say I dooooo….”_

Bix had been right, of course. He was lucky. He had always been lucky.

The singer on the radio had point; it was all make-believe, all the world was a stage, but, if you were one of the lucky ones, you’d find someone to whom you could show your real face, tell your real name.

Someone to trust with the all deep down truths of you. 

But .... what was the truth of Endeavour? 

“Hang on,” Bixby said, then, as the music began to fade. “How did you come to know all the words to that song, anyway?”

Endeavour flushed at that, and then he tugged on his ear and turned away, as if he’d been caught out at something indecent.

Bixby laughed. 

Perhaps he wasn’t so alone, after all. 

After all, everyone, it seemed—even the ones we know and love best of all—still has their secrets.


End file.
